Dancing and Dating

One, two cha-cha-cha. One partner going forward, the other going back. A flirty dance filled with desire. The push-pull of steps, emotions and magical exchanges of a couple sharing common interests and exploring their attraction. Capable of creating a chemical reaction far more powerful than any conjured in a laboratory. They’re eager to learn more about each other but worried about making missteps and mistakes. After all, broken hearts definitely hurt more and take longer to heal than toes that have been trod upon. In the beginning, the signals are sometimes coming fast and furious and are confusing to the point where neither knows whether the connection has the potential of lasting or will end up fleeting.

Unlike the romantic heroes we enjoy writing and reading about, great guys are often hesitant in making that first step in the dating dance. Yet I’ve heard from many that they prefer remaining the “hunter”. These guys like maintaining some distance while surveying the situation. Facing the “music” of a potential love match is daunting for them even though we’re ten years into the New Millennium.

As an author, I adore writing Cinderella stories. From a creative standpoint, I’ll compare her bare foot to a single woman’s bare left ring finger. Her love bond begins with a slipper while a modern woman’s begins with an engagement ring. But although Cinderella and her Prince Charming may have waltzed their way into each other’s lives and hearts, in today’s society life happens at warp speed and sometimes slams couples together much as the people in a mosh pit. Love, or what is professed as love, is here today and gone tomorrow. Instead of the controlled, graceful tempo embraced by the storybook couple, dating today creates whirling dervishes who lose control of their love connection—or who never have a chance at making a connection due to erratic pacing.

Before writing this blog, I pondered some of the many dances in which couples engage from their first meeting to the moment of a marriage proposal. The melody and words of “At Last” played in my mind. What a delicious slow burn on the dance floor that song intimately ignites. I’m a woman who enjoys a varied pace throughout the relationship, but I prefer a slower dance at first. A dance where every breath, every movement, every word is felt and heard and savored. Save the fastest dances for those dervishes as I believe love belongs in a ballroom as opposed to on a break-dancing mat. I’ve always said I’m a romantic at heart but a realist in practice. True love definitely happens but it is hard won, especially if you’re tapping so fast your feet become numb. Ever try putting a shoe on a foot that has “fallen asleep”? Slow and steady, with moments of spontaneity, are what make a better love connection, in my opinion.

In my historical erotic romance novel, TORMENTED, Eve and Charles engage in many dances together in their quest for healing—both emotional and physical—and love.

A Boston socialite’s hope is blind but given sight when a handsome practitioner accepts her challenging medical case.

While shipboard in 1888, Eve Morneau is the victim of a venomous beetle’s bite. Her healing and sexual awakening are placed in the hands of a New Orleans physician, Charles Galletiére. Charles not only shuns society but also the treatment regimens practiced by his peers. Eve is pitted against more than one foe as she struggles with her attraction to Charles and wonders whether or not her cure and a romantic commitment from him are possible.

What about you, readers? Do you enjoy and prefer sexual tension and romantic build-up in the fiction you read and the relationship you cherish? Or is a whirlwind romance more of what you find exciting?